Respiratory Care Program Meeting Minutes

June 16, 2023, 2-3:30 p.m.

Meeting Place

Hybrid

Chair

Jan Szoke

Recorder

Lori Bagley

Attendees

Members in Attendance

Cynthia Maskey, dean, health professions; Joel Dykstra, AVP, academic services; Jan Szoke, chair; Karina Moore, health profession recruiter; Rajagopal Sreedhar, medical director; Lori Badgley-LLCC program director; Michael Meyers, clinical coordinator; Stevi Surratt, instructor/manager JMH; Ashley Calbow, adjunct faculty (class of 2014); Kristin King, adjunct faculty (class of 2016, Felicia Strauch, John Sanford, OSF-Peoria; Don Laws, St. John’s Hospital; Tamara Ajagbe, Springfield Memorial Hospital; Lori Valentine, Springfield Memorial Hospital; Sheryl Roberts, Springfield Memorial Hospital; Brent Ryherd, Decatur Memorial Hospital; Michael Farmer, class of 2024

Members Declined

Fabiola Gonzalez, student success coach; Lindsey Weihmeir, admissions specialist; Emily Hasara, science, high school; Sheila Leggett, Springfield Clinic

Members Absent

Laurel Bretz, director, Community Education; Karen Sanders, executive director, LLCC Foundation; Lora Polley, Taylorville Memorial Hospital; Brieanne Condie, Decatur Memorial Hospital; Toni Cross, SJH educator; Greg Lowe, public member

Guests

N/A

Agenda

  1. Welcome and open meeting (Jan Szoke)
  2. Site visit for continuing accreditation (Lori Badgley)
  3. CoARC annual report 2023 (Lori Badgley)
  4. TMC and CSE action plan for 2022 results (Lori Badgley)
  5. Outcomes for 2023 grads so far (Lori Badgley)
  6. CoARC surveys 2023 (Lori Badgley)
  7. Current/upcoming cohorts (Lori Badgley)
  8. Report from lab coordinator (Lori Badgley)
  9. Report from clinical coordinator (Mike Meyers)
  10. Other: chairperson for 2024 (Lori Badgley)

Minutes

1. Welcome and open the meeting (Jan Szoke)

Roll call and acceptance of the 2022 minutes – meeting minutes were accepted when they were sent out in 2022 after the meeting via email.

2. Site visit for continuing accreditation (Lori Badgley)

  • Success!!!! Strengths of the program per the site visitors include:
    • Supportive administration who are very knowledgeable and supportive of the program’s needs, PD is enthusiastic and well0like by the students, dedicated to promoting student success; DCE is responsive to the clinical faculty, preceptors, and students; Adjunct faculty are actively engaged and dedicated to the success of the program and the students; Medical Director (Dr. Sreedhar) is very supportive of the program and profession. He is actively involved in student learning by creating opportunities for specialty learning and outpatient care in addition to critical care; the clinical affiliates support the program by providing excellent preceptors, as well as loan and donate equipment and supplies to keep lab experience current; Student Success Coaches and financial aid advisors actively assist students in obtaining financial support such as PATH and TRIO programs, tutoring services; Advisory committee provides valuable input and advice to program leadership; student handbook is an excellent document, encompassing all important items to guide students through the program; the program encourages student professionalism including AARC membership for all students, faculty, and adjunct faculty. Faculty and clinical instructors instill confidence in the students, which is recognized by employers following graduation.
  • Most importantly, we had no guideline violations!
  • The Site Visit Team offered a few suggestions for improvement.
    • Consider adding an opportunity for students to add comments to the evaluation of preceptors in E-Value. Although student feedback related to clinical preceptors is overwhelmingly positive, they expressed a desire to have a formal process to document their feedback. We also suggest providing feedback to preceptors at the end of each semester. (Mike, our DCE, is working with E-Value on updating this evaluation form)
    • Explore opportunities to expand interprofessional education, including use of the simulation center. Out students who just graduated in May did have the opportunity to participate in an IPE day with LLCC nursing. We are trying to find ways to incorporate more IPEs, but scheduling is a difficult barrier to overcome.
    • Begin a dialogue with students regarding scheduling of classes (one day/week vs 2 per week). This is more about 2nd year students. However, some 1st year students expressed difficulty with adjunct instructors only teaching one day a week. However, adjunct has always been very attentive to responding to email quickly and meeting virtually with students are struggling.
    • Consider forming a Lambda Beta Chapter. This is the national honor society for Respiratory Care.
    • Develop a formalized follow-up to pulmonary medicine rounds where students present patient case studies and receive feedback from the pulmonary fellows.
    • Investigate opportunities to reduce paper-based lab/clinical performances assessment to minimize risk of lost documents and streamline record keeping by the facility. Although students will be given paper forms, students are now scanning and saving completed forms to a shared folder. This will minimize the risk of lost papers, and students can see them for review at any time.
    • Peer tutoring is a key component of student learning and remediation as expressed by the students and faculty. LLCC should continue to support tutoring opportunities specific to respiratory therapy.

3. CoARC annual report 2023 (Lori Badgley)

  • For the current period three-year average 2020-2022
    • Retention 88%, National 91%
    • Job Placement 92%, National 86%
    • RRT credentialing success 80%, National 72%
    • TMC High Cut Score Success 84%, National 83%
    • Overall Employer Satisfaction 100%, National 99%
    • Overall Graduate Satisfaction 100%, National 99%
  • Why the change in success? We currently have graduated smaller classes which has a greater impact when a student is not successful. Regarding the Class of 2022, we had five graduates. One student had to sit for the CSE exam twice to obtain the RRT credentials. We also have one student who did not pass the TMC exam on the first attempt and has not retaken the exam.

4. TMC and CSE action plan for 2022 results (Lori Badgley)

  • TMC sub scores that fell below 85% of national average:
    • 1A
      • We have never had a problem in this category before. Unfortunately, we had one student who did not do well in this section. Before this student took the exam our average was 94%. After this student took the exam, our score was 78%. We will continue monitoring this section. No changes required.
      • Dr. Sreedhar suggested a 10-question review time with students as they are practicing their board questions. This may help them learn some test taking techniques that will help students be more successful.
      • Tamara mentioned that our recent graduates met with Tiffany Whitaker at SMH. She has experience with test taking strategies and building confidence in students with taking board exams. She may be willing to come work with students or give information to faculty.
  • CSE sub scores that fell below 85% of national average:
    • 1D, 2B, 3A, 3B, 3G
      • 2B and 3G are repeat categories where students seem to struggle. 2B (ensuring infection prevention) and 3G (provide respiratory care in high-risk situations) are still a struggle in application, however students score well in these areas on the TME (2B 114%, 3G 94%). Implementation of Classmates needs to be emphasized in all classes. Also, encouraging students to review the feedback from the classmate simulation needs to take a priority. Students will now be required to journal about the feedback to ensure they are watching and learning from the feedback. c Adding more questions in application will also help to ensure student success. Revisit the idea of central sterilization rotation for clinical. 1D (evaluate procedure results), 3A (maintain a patent airway), 3B (perform ACT and LET) also fell below the national mean. These subcategories have not been a problem before. We did have one graduate from 2017 who decided to reattempt this exam and scored very poorly in these categories. Due to this information, we will continue to monitor these categories, but no changes are needed.

5. Outcomes for 2023 grads so far (Lori Badgley)

  • Job Placement 100%
  • CRT Success 4 out of 5
  • TMC High-cut Score 4 out of 5
  • RRT Success 3 of 4

6. CoARC surveys 2023 (Lori Badgley)

  • Employer Overall rating of Grads = 3 and above 100%
  • Graduate Overall rating of Program = 3 and above 100%
  • Student Survey all areas rated 3 and above 100%

7. Current/upcoming cohorts (Lori Badgley)

  • Class of 2024
    • Started with 14 and have 10 remaining. 2 withdrew for personal reasons in fall 1 and 2 withdrew for personal reasons in spring 1. We do have 1 student from the class of 2023 who withdrew for personal reasons on track for coming back this fall as a 2nd year student.
  • Class of 2025
    • 10 on the list to start so far, 2 pending
  • Barriers to enrollment
    • We have had some barriers to enrollment this year. Students must meet with a success coach to begin the application process. However, our student success coach has been very busy and thus behind. Perspective students are having to wait weeks to get an appointment. Often, they are told to come in during open hours and wait for an open time. This is not practical for most people, to sit for several hours hoping they will get to see her. Currently, there are no opportunities to meet with the success coach until July 12th.
    • Then when applications are sent to admissions, that individual has also been behind, so applications sit pending, often, I as the program director, do not even know those applications have been started.
    • I would like to say, however, that our admission specialist worked over a weekend to get our applications she was behind on, processed so I could get started on my portion of the admissions.
    • This is a problem for programs with open enrollment and open seats. Any thoughts on how perhaps we could improve this?
    • Cynthia commented that program directors are reaching out to their own prospective students and sending out the welcome packets ahead of the admission process.
    • Joel Dykstra commented about the changes in personnel which caused a halt in the streamlining process that was being worked on to improve the admission process.
    • Lori mentioned the campus visit day on June 20. If any facility has job shadowing opportunities for prospective students, please forward the information to me. Peoria, SJH, SMH, DMH.
    • Other opportunities to recruit students coming up include the Boys and Girls Club even at LLCC on July 10 and the HELPrS Program this summer. The HELPrs Program will be at our facility on July 12 where there will be several stations set up and it will be very interactive. Most of the second year students have agreed to help with this day.

8. Report from lab coordinator (Lori Badgley)

  • In December, our second year students who graduate May 2022 participate in an IPE with LLCC nursing students. The simulation was regarding a rapid response due to an accidental extubation.
  • Also, second year students were able to teach nursing students how to use a face mask and ambu bag correctly.
  • This year we were able to update the skin of our ABG manual arm, purchase a second automatic ABG arm, and a new intubation trainer. The automatic ABG arm will allow students to practice independently when the instructor needs to work one-on-one with another student who is finding it challenging to learn how to obtain an ABG.
  • The new intubation simulation will help to replace our older Charlie trainer. The new trainer also has the capabilities of airway swelling which will increase students' application of advanced skills.
  • We continue to get disposable supplies from outdated supplies at both SJH and SMH.
  • I made a contact with a member of the ALS association in the past year. She was able to donate used equipment to our program, such as suction machines, cough-assist machines, chest vest machines, and disposable products. This equipment was provided by families who lost loved ones to ALS. The association for ALS is unable to reuse equipment from patient to patient.
  • We also have one student whose husband had ALS; he has since passed away. She donated several disposable RT supplies to our program, as well.

9. Report from clinical coordinator (Mike Meyers)

  • Currently we have 10 students doing clinical. Summer rotations include ICU, ED, GF, Critical Access Hospital (JMH), and Sleep Lab. We are utilizing St. John Sleep Lab this semester. We had sent students to SJ sleep lab in the past but had scheduling conflicts with END students. That is no longer an issue as their clinical day has changed.
  • We have a new adjunct clinical faculty, Ashley Calbow. Ashley has been an RT for several years here at SJH. Very knowledgeable. Works primarily Critical Care area. Welcome Ashley.
  • Lori mentioned that Kristin King is also a new adjunct member who is working didactically this summer. She will be both didactic and clinical in the fall semester.
  • We have moved the Surgery rotation to fall 2 so that students have more experience working with ETT before going. Also, the students will do a pre-test to help them remember the intubation procedure.
  • Students said they could not write comments in E-Value on their evaluation of preceptors when on clinical. A comment area has now been added on the Preceptor Evaluation by Student.
  • Lori mentioned the addition of Professional Development added to clinical. Students will need to do eight hours of professional development. This could include conferences, IPEs, on-line education, attending ISRC meetings, AARC educational opportunities, job shadowing at Springfield Clinic, and possibly EMT ride-along.

10. Other: chairperson for 2024 (Lori Badgley)

  • Felicia Strauch volunteered to be the chairperson for 2024. No other nominations. The vote was taken and passed unanimously. Welcome Felicia!

Before closing the meeting, Lori thanked Jan for not only coming to serve as chair this summer, but her years of dedication to the RCP.